There are some places in the world that make you weak at the knees with nostalgia and Paronella Castle is one of them. It was the impossible dream of an ambitious Spanish immigrant who sailed to Australia in 1913 to make a life for himself and his fiancé waiting back home. José Paronella worked for…

For thousands of years, a community of Inupiat Eskimos lived, survived and thrived in one of the harshest environments in the world. This is King Island and these are the improbable cliff-hanging houses of Ukivok that a displaced community still calls home more than 50 years after its abandonment. (c) NOAA Photo Library In 1959, the…

You might be ready to light up that Cuban cigar thanks to Obama or fill up your Instagram account with voguish snapshots from a Havana vacation, but even with the historic opening of diplomatic relations with the US, how will life in Cuba really change for Cubans? To get a real idea of the transition that lies ahead for Cubans emerging from their…

I‘ve been spending some time lately getting to know the quartier of Barbès a little better. Had I ever listened to those funny people on the television who declared this neighbourhood a Paris “No Go Zone”, I would never have discovered one of the most surreal secrets in Paris. If you ever find yourself in the area, you must stop in at the…

Nobody likes a visit to the car pound. It probably as one of my least favourite places to be on earth, but you wouldn’t have a hard time convincing me to pay a visit to this particular car pound, hidden 150ft below a piazza in the city of Naples, sealed off after WWII and forgotten about for more than…

“A small German town with a tricky name, which I immediately forgot. Somewhere in Eastern Germany. People have not lived here for a long time, and only occasionally tourists come to walk through the deserted, dilapidated streets.” In these photographs by Russian photographer Dmitry Chistoprudov, it looks like World War II ended just yesterday. And he almost…

I just got a postcard (fine, it was an email) from my favourite motel in the world, to say that they’ve opened a brand new Hicksville location! Do you remember my road trip through California back in the summer of 14? Well if you don’t, you should probably see the trailer park motel I stayed in while…

Not a single ship visited Tristan da Cunha from 1909 until 1919, until the HMS Yarmouth finally stopped by to inform the islanders of the outcome of World War I. Accessible on by sea, Tristan da Cunha is in fact an archipelago, the remotest inhabited one in the world, although only the main island was settled by man, with…

I had been curious about what was behind the door of No. 6 Rue Gît-le-Cœur in Saint Germain for quite a while before I decided to Google it, half expecting to be disappointed by news that it no longer existed. To my surprise, a kind voice picked up at the other end of the telephone line. “Yes…

This post doesn’t require much introduction, only a question. Why is the abandoned road always the most tempting one to take? I found an awesome Flickr group dedicated entirely to disused roads, so let’s take a drive down memory lane… Lead image: Old Burroughs Road Bridge, Closed truss bridge over the Hushpuckena River in Bolivar County, Mississippi. The…